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World

Western allies differ over jets for Ukraine as Russia claims gains

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  • Biden says ‘no’ when asked about F-16s for Ukraine
  • Zelenskiy says Moscow seeks ‘big revenge’
  • Russian administrator claims foothold in Vuhledar
  • Kyiv could recapture ground when Western weapons arrive – group

KYIV, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s defence minister is expected in Paris on Tuesday to meet President Emmanuel Macron amid a debate among Kyiv’s allies over whether to provide fighter jets for its war against Russia, after U.S. President Joe Biden ruled out giving F-16s.

Ukraine planned to push for Western fourth-generation fighters like F-16s after securing supplies of main battle tanks last week, an adviser to Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Friday.

Asked at the White House on Monday if the United States would provide F-16s, Biden told reporters: “No.”

But France and Poland appear to be willing to entertain any such request from Ukraine, with Macron telling reporters in The Hague on Monday that “by definition, nothing is excluded” when it comes to military assistance.

In remarks carried on French television before Biden spoke in Washington, Macron stressed any such move would depend on several factors including the need to avoid escalation and assurances that the aircraft would not “touch Russian soil.” He said Reznikov would also meet his French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu in Paris on Tuesday.

In Poland on Monday, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also did not rule out a possible supply of F-16s to neighbouring Ukraine, in response to a question from a reporter before Biden spoke.

Morawiecki said in remarks posted on his website that any such transfer would take place “in complete coordination” with NATO countries.

Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukraine president’s office, noted “positive signals” from Poland and said France “does not exclude” such a move in separate posts on his Telegram channel.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was in Japan on Tuesday where he thanked Tokyo for the “planes and the cargo capabilities” it is providing Ukraine. A day earlier in South Korea he urged Seoul to increase its military support to Ukraine.

Biden’s comment came shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had begun exacting its revenge for Ukraine’s resistance to its invasion with relentless attacks in the east, where it appeared to be making incremental gains.

Zelenskiy has warned for weeks that Moscow aims to step up its assault after about two months of virtual stalemate along the front line that stretches across the south and east.

Ukraine won a huge boost last week when Germany and the United States announced plans to provide heavy tanks, ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock on the issue.

While there was no sign of a broader new Russian offensive, the administrator of Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, said Russian troops had secured a foothold in Vuhledar, a coal-mining town whose ruins have been a Ukrainian bastion since the outset of the war.

Pushilin said that despite “huge losses” Ukrainian forces were consolidating positions in industrial facilities.

‘BATTLE FOR EVERY METER’

Pushilin said Ukrainian forces were throwing reinforcements at Bakhmut, Maryinka and Vuhledar, towns running from north to south just west of Donetsk city. The Russian state news agency TASS quoted him as saying Russian forces were making advances there, but “not clear-cut, that is, here there is a battle for literally every meter.”

Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Ukraine still controlled Maryinka and Vuhledar, where Russian attacks were less intense on Monday.

Pushilin’s adviser, Yan Gagin, said fighters from Russian mercenary force Wagner had taken partial control of a supply road leading to Bakhmut, a city that has been Moscow’s focus for months.

A day earlier, the head of Wagner said his fighters had secured Blahodatne, a village just north of Bakhmut, although Kyiv said it had repelled assaults on Blahodatne.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports. But the locations of the reported fighting indicated clear, though gradual, Russian gains.

In central Zaporizhzhia region and in southern Kherson region, Russian forces shelled more than 40 settlements, Ukraine’s General Staff said. Targets included the city of Kherson, where there were casualties.

The Russians also launched four rocket attacks on Ochakiv in southern Mykolaiv, the army said, on the day Zelenskiy met the Danish prime minister in Mykolaiv city, to the northeast.

WESTERN DELAYS

Zelenskiy is urging the West to hasten delivery of its promised weapons so Ukraine can go on the offensive, but most of the hundreds of tanks pledged by Western countries are months away from delivery.

British Defence Minister Ben Wallace said the 14 Challenger tanks donated by Britain would be on the front line around April or May, without giving an exact timetable.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Western countries supplying arms leads “to NATO countries more and more becoming directly involved in the conflict – but it doesn’t have the potential to change the course of events and will not do so.”

The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War think-tank said “the West’s failure to provide the necessary materiel” last year was the main reason Kyiv’s advances had halted since November.

The researchers said in a report that Ukraine could still recapture territory once the promised weapons arrive.

The Belarusian defence ministry said on Tuesday that Russia and Belarus had started a week-long session of staff training in preparation for joint drills in Russia in September.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow justifies as necessary to protect itself from its neighbour’s ties with the West, has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.

Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Doina Chiacu and Stephen Coates; Editing by Cynthia Osterman & Simon Cameron-Moore

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Biden says no F-16s for Ukraine as Russia claims gains

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  • Russian administrator claims foothold in Vuhledar
  • Kyiv says Russian gains come at huge cost
  • Think-tank says delay in Western arms halted Ukraine’s advance

KYIV, Ukraine/WASHINGTON Jan 30 (Reuters) – The United States will not provide the F-16 fighter jets that Ukraine has sought in its fight against Russia, President Joe Biden said on Monday, as Russian forces claimed a series of incremental gains in the country’s east.

Ukraine planned to push for Western fourth-generation fighter jets such as the F-16 after securing supplies of main battle tanks last week, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister said on Friday. A Ukrainian air force spokesman said it would take its pilots about half a year to train on such fighter jets.

Asked if the United States would provide the jets, Biden told reporters at the White House, “No.”

The brief exchange came shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia had begun exacting its revenge for Ukraine’s resistance to its invasion with relentless attacks in the east.

Zelenskiy has warned for weeks that Moscow aims to step up its assault on Ukraine after about two months of virtual stalemate along the front line that stretches across the south and east.

Ukraine won a huge boost last week when Germany and the United States announced plans to provide heavy tanks, ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock on the issue.

“The next big hurdle will now be the fighter jets,” Yuriy Sak, who advises Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, told Reuters on Friday.

While there was no sign of a broader new Russian offensive, the administrator of Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, said Russian troops had secured a foothold in Vuhledar, a coal-mining town whose ruins have been a Ukrainian bastion since the outset of the war.

Pushilin said Ukrainian forces were continuing to throw reinforcements at Bakhmut, Maryinka and Vuhledar, three towns running from north to south just west of Donetsk city. The Russian state news agency TASS quoted him as saying Russian forces were making advances there, but “not clear-cut, that is, here there is a battle for literally every meter.”

Pushilin’s adviser, Yan Gagin, said fighters from Russian mercenary force Wagner had taken partial control of a supply road leading to Bakhmut, a city that has been Moscow’s main focus for months.

A day earlier, the head of Wagner said his fighters had secured Blahodatne, a village just north of Bakhmut.

Kyiv said it had repelled assaults on Blahodatne and Vuhledar, and Reuters could not independently verify the situations there. But the locations of the reported fighting indicated clear, though gradual, Russian gains.

Zelenskiy said Russian attacks in the east were relentless despite heavy casualties on the Russian side, casting the assaults as payback for Ukraine’s success in pushing Russian forces back from the capital, northeast and south earlier in the conflict.

[1/7] U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon from the 140th Wing of the Colorado Air National Guard during NATO exercise Saber Strike flies over Amari military air base, Estonia June 12, 2018. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

“I think that Russia really wants its big revenge. I think they have (already) started it,” Zelenskiy told reporters in the southern port city of Odesa.

Mykola Salamakha, a Ukrainian colonel and military analyst, told Ukrainian Radio NV that Moscow’s assault in Vuhledar was coming at huge cost.

“The town is on an upland and an extremely strong defensive hub has been created there,” he said. “This is a repetition of the situation in Bakhmut – one wave of Russian troops after another crushed by the Ukrainian armed forces.”

WESTERN DELAYS

The hundreds of modern tanks and armoured vehicles pledged to Ukraine by Western countries in recent weeks for a counteroffensive to recapture territory are months away from delivery.

This leaves Kyiv to fight through the winter in what both sides have described as a meat grinder of relentless attritional warfare.

Moscow’s Wagner mercenary force has sent thousands of convicts recruited from Russian prisons into battle around Bakhmut, buying time for Russia’s regular military to reconstitute units with hundreds of thousands of reservists.

Zelenskiy is urging the West to hasten delivery of its promised weapons so Ukraine can go on the offensive.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Western countries supplying arms leads “to NATO countries more and more becoming directly involved in the conflict – but it doesn’t have the potential to change the course of events and will not do so.”

The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War think-tank said “the West’s failure to provide the necessary materiel” last year was the main reason Kyiv’s advances had halted since November.

That allowed Russia to apply pressure at Bakhmut and fortify the front against a future Ukrainian counter-attack, its researchers said in a report, though they said Ukraine could still recapture territory once the promised weapons arrive.

Zelenskiy met Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Monday in Mykolaiv, a rare visit by a foreign leader close to the front. The city, where Russia’s advance in the south was halted, had been under relentless bombardment until Ukraine pushed the front line back in November.

Russia’s invasion, which it launched on Feb. 24 last year claiming it was necessary to protect itself from its neighbour’s ties with the West, has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.

Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Kevin Liffey, Ronald Popeski and Reuters bureaus; Writing by Peter Graff, Philippa Fletcher and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Gareth Jones, William Maclean and Cynthia Osterman

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Business

U.S. to reveal scientific milestone on fusion energy

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WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday will announce that scientists at a national lab have made a breakthrough on fusion, the process that powers the sun and stars that one day could provide a cheap source of electricity, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have achieved a net energy gain for the first time, in a fusion experiment using lasers, one of the people said.

While the results are a milestone in a scientific quest that has been developing since at least the 1930s, the ratio of energy going into the reaction at Livermore to getting energy out of it needs to be about 100 times bigger to create a process producing commercial amounts of electricity, one of the sources said.

The FT first reported the experiment.

Fusion works when nuclei of two atoms are subjected to extreme heat of 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit) or higher leading them to fuse into a new larger atom, giving off enormous amounts of energy.

But the process consumes vast amounts of energy and the trick has been to make the process self-sustaining and get more energy out than goes in and to do so continuously instead of for brief moments.

[1/2] Technicians use a service system lift to access the target chamber interior for inspection and maintenance at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a laser-based inertial confinement fusion research device, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States in 2008. Philip Saltonstall/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Handout via REUTERS

If fusion is commercialized, which backers say could happen in a decade or more, it would have additional benefits including the generation of virtually carbon-free electricity which could help in the fight against climate change without the amounts of radioactive nuclear waste produced by today’s fission reactors.

Running an electric power plant off fusion presents tough hurdles however, such as how to contain the heat economically and to keep lasers firing consistently. Other methods of fusion use magnets instead of lasers.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is slated to hold a media briefing on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) on a “major scientific breakthrough.”

The department has no information ahead of the briefing, a spokesperson said.

Lawrence Livermore focuses mainly on national security issues related to nuclear weapons and the fusion experiment could lead to testing safer testing of the nation’s arsenal of such bombs.

But advances at the labs could also help efforts at companies that hope to develop power plants fired by fusion including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Focused Energy and General Fusion.

Investors including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and John Doerr have poured money into companies building fusion. Private industry secured more than $2.8 billion last year, according to the Fusion Industry Association for a total of about $5 billion in recent years.

Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Marguerita Choy and Richard Chang

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World

Exclusive: U.S. imposes sanctions on Turkish businessman, citing links to Iran’s Quds Force

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WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on prominent Turkish businessman Sitki Ayan and his network of companies, accusing him of acting as a facilitator for oil sales and money laundering on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Ayan’s companies have established international sales contracts for Iranian oil, arranged shipments and helped launder the proceeds and obscured the origin of the Iranian oil on behalf of Iran’s Quds Force, an arm of the IRGC, the Treasury said in a statement first reported by Reuters.

“Ayan has established business contracts to sell Iranian oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars to buyers,” in China, the United Arab Emirates and Europe, the statement says, adding that he then funneled the proceeds back to the Quds Force.

Ayan’s son Bahaddin Ayan, his associate Kasim Oztas and two other Turkish citizens involved in his business network are also designated, along with 26 companies including his ASB Group of Companies, a Gibraltar-based holding company and a vessel.

Ayan, the son Bahaddin and Oztas were not immediately available for comment. Ayan’s ASB Group and Turkey’s Directorate of Communications did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Treasury action freezes any U.S. assets of those designated and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. Those that engage in certain transactions with those designated also risk sanctions.

The U.S. measures come at a time when ties between the United States and Turkey are strained over a host of issues, including disagreement over Syria policy and Ankara’s purchase of Russian air defense systems.

Most recently, Washington has warned Turkey to refrain from carrying out a military incursion into northern Syria after Ankara said it was preparing a possible ground invasion against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia that it views as terrorists but who make up the bulk of U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Washington maintains sweeping sanctions on Iran and has looked for ways to increase pressure as efforts to resurrect a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran have stalled.

U.S. President Joe Biden had sought to negotiate the return of Iran to the nuclear deal after former President Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement in 2018.

The 2015 agreement limited Iran’s uranium enrichment activity to make it harder for Tehran to develop nuclear arms in return for lifting international sanctions. Iran denies wanting to acquire nuclear weapons.

Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Daphne Psaledakis; Additional reporting by Ezgi Erkoyun; Editing by Don Durfee and Howard Goller

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World

Ukrainians brace for bleak winter as Russian strikes cripple power capacity

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  • Ukrainians brace for winter with little or no heating
  • Temperatures in several areas already below freezing
  • Kherson residents can express interest in moving elsewhere
  • Ukraine security service raids famous Kyiv monastery

KYIV, Nov 22 (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appealed to Ukrainians to conserve energy amid relentless Russian strikes that have already halved the country’s power capacity, as the United Nations’ health body warned of a humanitarian disaster in Ukraine this winter.

Authorities said millions of Ukrainians, including in the capital Kyiv, could face power cuts at least until the end of March due to the strikes. Citizens in the recently liberated southern city of Kherson may apply to be relocated to areas where heating and security problems are less acute, they said.

Temperatures have been unseasonably mild this autumn, but are starting to dip below zero and are expected to drop to -20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) or even lower in some areas during the winter months.

Russia has been targeting Ukrainian power facilities with rocket strikes after a series of battlefield setbacks that have included withdrawing its forces from Kherson city to the east bank of the mighty Dnipro River that bisects the country.

“The systematic damage to our energy system from strikes by the Russian terrorists is so considerable that all our people and businesses should be mindful and redistribute their consumption throughout the day,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

“Try to limit your personal consumption of electricity.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) said hundreds of hospitals and healthcare facilities lacked fuel, water and electricity to meet people’s basic needs.

“Ukraine’s health system is facing its darkest days in the war so far. Having endured more than 700 attacks, it is now also a victim of the energy crisis,” Hans Kluge, WHO’s regional director for Europe, said in a statement after visiting Ukraine.

BLANKETS

Workers were racing to repair damaged power infrastructure, Sergey Kovalenko, the head of YASNO, which provides energy for Kyiv, said on Monday.

“Stock up on warm clothes, blankets, think about options that will help you get through a long outage,” Kovalenko said. “It’s better to do it now than to be miserable.”

In a Telegram message for Kherson residents – especially the elderly, women with children and those who are ill or disabled – Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk posted a number of ways residents can express interest in leaving.

“You can be evacuated for the winter period to safer regions of the country,” she wrote, citing both security and infrastructure problems.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the blackouts and Russia’s strikes on energy infrastructure were the consequences of Kyiv being unwilling to negotiate, the state TASS news agency reported late last week.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Russia was bombarding Kherson from across the Dnipro River, now that its troops had fled.

“There is no military logic: they just want to take revenge on the locals,” he tweeted late on Monday.

[1/5] A woman walks past a statue in the central sqaure after Russia’s military retreat from Kherson, Ukraine November 21, 2022. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Ukraine’s Suspilne news agency reported fresh explosions in Kherson city on Tuesday morning.

Moscow denies intentionally targeting civilians in what it calls a “special military operation” to rid Ukraine of nationalists and protect Russian-speaking communities.

Kyiv and the West describe Russia’s actions as an unprovoked war of aggression.

The nine-month war has killed tens of thousands, uprooted millions and pummelled the global economy, driving up food and energy prices. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Tuesday the world’s worst energy crisis since the 1970s would trigger a sharp slowdown, with Europe hit hardest.

RAID ON MONASTERY

Ukraine’s SBU security service and police raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv early on Tuesday as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”, the SBU said.

The sprawling Kyiv Pechersk Lavra complex – or Monastery of the Caves – is a Ukrainian cultural treasure and the headquarters of the Russian-backed wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that falls under the Moscow Patriarchate.

Russia’s Orthodox Church condemned the raid as an “act of intimidation”.

Battles continued to rage in the east, where Russia has sent some of the forces it moved from around Kherson in the south, pressing an offensive of its own along a stretch of frontline west of the city of Donetsk held by its proxies since 2014.

“The enemy does not stop shelling the positions of our troops and settlements near the contact line (in the Donetsk region),” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Tuesday.

“Attacks continue to damage critical infrastructure and civilian homes.”

Four people were killed and four others wounded in Ukraine-controlled areas of Donetsk region over the past 24 hours, regional governor Pavlo Kyryleno said on Telegram messaging app.

Russian shelling also hit a humanitarian aid distribution centre in the town of Orihiv in southeastern Ukraine on Tuesday, killing a volunteer and wounding two women, the regional governor said.

Orihiv is about 110 km (70 miles) east of the Zaporizhizhia nuclear power station which has been shelled again in the past few days, with Russia and Ukraine trading blame for the blasts.

Experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) toured the site on Monday. The agency, which has repeatedly called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the area to avoid a major disaster, said the experts found widespread damage but nothing that compromised the plant’s essential systems.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that no substantive progress had been made towards creating a security zone around the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest.

Reporting by Oleksandr Kozhukhar and Maria Starkova in Kyiv, Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Ronald Popeski in Winnipeg; Writing by Shri Navaratnam and Gareth Jones; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Alex Richardson

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World

‘Playing with fire’: UN warns as team to inspect damage at Ukraine nuclear plant

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  • IAEA chief warns: ‘You’re playing with fire!’ after blasts
  • Russia, Ukraine trade blame for shelling
  • President Zelenskiy says eastern region hit by heavy artillery
  • ‘Fiercest battles’ in Donetsk region, Zelenskiy says

LONDON/LVIV, Ukraine, Nov 21 (Reuters) – The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has warned that whoever fired artillery at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was “playing with fire” as his team prepared to inspect it on Monday for damage from the weekend strikes.

The attacks on Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant in the south of Ukraine came as battles raged in the east, where Russian forces pounded Ukrainian positions along the front line, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

The shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station follows setbacks for Russian forces in the Kherson region in the south and a Russian response that has included a barrage of missile strikes across the country, many on power facilities.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said more than a dozen blasts shook the nuclear plant late on Saturday and on Sunday. IAEA head Rafael Grossi said the attacks were extremely disturbing and completely unacceptable.

“Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately. As I have said many times before, you’re playing with fire!” Grossi said in a statement.

Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for the shelling of the facility, as they have done repeatedly in recent months after attacks on it or near it.

Citing information provided by plant management, an IAEA team on the ground said there had been damage to some buildings, systems and equipment, but none of them critical for nuclear safety and security.

The team plans to conduct an assessment on Monday, Grossi said, but Russian nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom said there would be curbs on what the team could inspect.

“If they want to inspect a facility that has nothing to do with nuclear safety, access will be denied,” Renat Karchaa, an adviser to Rosenergoatom’s CEO, told the Tass news agency.

Repeated shelling of the plant has raised concern about a grave accident just 500 km (300 miles) from the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

The Zaporizhzhia plant provided about a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity before Russia’s invasion, and has been forced to operate on back-up generators a number of times. It has six Soviet-designed VVER-1000 V-320 water-cooled and water-moderated reactors containing Uranium 235.

The reactors are shut down but there is a risk that nuclear fuel could overheat if the power driving the cooling systems is cut. Shelling has repeatedly cut power lines.

Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine fired shells at power lines supplying the plant but Ukraine’s nuclear energy firm Energoatom accused Russia’s military of shelling the site, saying the Russians had targeted infrastructure necessary to restart parts of the plant in an attempt to further limit Ukraine’s power supply.

A view shows Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant from the town of Nikopol, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine November 7, 2022. Picture taken through glass. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo

‘FIERCEST BATTLES’

In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces battered Ukrainian front-line positions with artillery fire, with the heaviest attacks in the Donetsk region, Zelenskiy said in a video address.

Russia withdrew its forces from the southern city of Kherson this month and moved some of them to reinforce positions in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, an industrial area known as the Donbas.

“The fiercest battles, as before, are in the Donetsk region. Although there were fewer attacks today due to worsening weather, the amount of Russian shelling unfortunately remains extremely high,” Zelenskiy said.

“In the Luhansk region, we are slowly moving forward while fighting. As of now, there have been almost 400 artillery attacks in the east since the start of the day,” he said.

Ukraine’s military in an early Monday update confirmed heavy fighting over the previous 24 hours, saying its forces had repelled Russian attacks in the Donetsk region while Russian forces were shelling in the Luhansk region in the east and Kharkiv in the northeast.

In the south, Zelenskiy said troops were “consistently and very calculatedly destroying the potential of the occupiers” but gave no details.

Kherson city remains without electricity, running water or heating.

Ukraine said on Saturday that about 60 Russian soldiers had been killed in a long-range artillery attack in the south, the second time in four days that Ukraine has claimed to have inflicted major casualties in a single incident.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that up to 50 Ukrainian servicemen were killed the previous day along the southern Donetsk front line and 50 elsewhere.

Reuters was not able to immediately verify any battlefield reports.

Russia calls its invasion of Ukraine a “special operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” its neighbour, though Kyiv and its allies say the invasion is an unprovoked war of aggression.

Oleh Zhdanov, a military analyst in Kyiv, said that according to his information, Russian offensives were taking place on the Bakhmut and Avdiivka front line in the Donetsk region, among others.

“The enemy is trying to break through our defences, to no avail,” Zhdanov said in a social media video. “We fight back – they suffer huge losses.”

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in London, Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv, Caleb Davis in Gdansk and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne;
Writing by Guy Faulconbridge, David Ljunggren and Shri Navaratnam;
Editing by Robert Birsel

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World

Ukraine nuclear plant shelled, U.N. warns: ‘You’re playing with fire!’

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  • IAEA says Ukraine plant rocked by 12 blasts
  • Plant is controlled by Russian forces
  • Moscow and Kyiv accuse other of shelling
  • ‘You’re playing with fire!’ – IAEA chief

LONDON, Nov 20 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control, was rocked by shelling on Sunday, drawing condemnation from the U.N. nuclear watchdog which said such attacks risked a major nuclear disaster.

More than a dozen blasts shook Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant on Saturday evening and Sunday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. Moscow and Kyiv both blamed the other for the shelling of the facility.

“The news from our team yesterday and this morning is extremely disturbing,” said Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA, whose team on the ground said there had been damage to some buildings, systems and equipment at the plant.

“Explosions occurred at the site of this major nuclear power plant, which is completely unacceptable. Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately. As I have said many times before, you’re playing with fire!”

Repeated shelling of the plant in southern Ukraine, which Russia took control of shortly after its February invasion, has raised concern about the potential for a grave accident just 500 km (300 miles) from the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, the 1986 Chornobyl disaster.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant provided about a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, and has been forced to operate on back-up generators a number of times. It has six Soviet-designed VVER-1000 V-320 water-cooled and water-moderated reactors containing Uranium 235.

The reactors are shut down but there is a risk that nuclear fuel could overheat if the power that drives the cooling systems was cut. Shelling has repeatedly cut power lines.

SIDES SWAP BLAME

Both Kyiv and Moscow have accused each other of attacking the plant on several occasions during the conflict and risking a nuclear accident, and they again exchanged blame on Sunday.

Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine fired shells at power lines supplying the plant, while TASS reported some of the site’s storage facilities had been hit by Ukrainian shelling, quoting an official from Russian nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom.

“They shelled not only yesterday, but also today, they are shelling right now,” said Renat Karchaa, an adviser to Rosenergoatom’s CEO, adding that any artillery attack at the site posed a threat to nuclear safety.

Karchaa said the shells had been fired near a dry nuclear waste storage facility and a building that houses fresh spent nuclear fuel, but that no radioactive emissions had currently been detected, according to TASS.

Ukraine’s nuclear energy firm Energoatom accused the Russian military of shelling the site and said there were at least 12 hits on plant infrastructure.

It said that Russia had targeted the infrastructure necessary to restart parts of the plant in an attempt to further limit Ukraine’s power supply.

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in London, Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv and Caleb Davis in Gdansk; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Pravin Char and Frances Kerry

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World

Russia hits Ukraine homes, evacuates Kherson, warns of escalation

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  • Missile smashes into Mykolaiv apartment block
  • Ukrainian forces on offensive in Kherson region
  • Kherson is gateway to Russian-annexed Crimea
  • Western nations reject Russia’s ‘dirty bomb’ accusation

MYKOLAIV, Ukraine, Oct 24 (Reuters) – Russia fired missiles and drones into the Ukrainian-held southern town of Mykolaiv, destroying an apartment block, and said the war was trending towards “uncontrolled escalation” in a flurry of telephone calls to Western defence ministers.

The strike on the shipbuilding town about 35 km (22 miles) northwest of the front line in Kherson came as Russia ordered 60,000 people to flee the region “to save your lives” in the face of a Ukrainian counter offensive.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu discussed the “rapidly deteriorating situation” in phone calls with British, French and Turkish counterparts, the ministry said.

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He also spoke by phone with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the second time in three days. The Pentagon said Austin told Shoigu he “rejected any pretext for Russian escalation.”

Without providing evidence, Shoigu said Ukraine could escalate by using a “dirty bomb”, or conventional explosives laced with radioactive material.

Ukraine does not possess nuclear weapons, while Russia has said it could protect its territory with its nuclear arsenal.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba rejected the accusation as “absurd” and “dangerous”, adding: “Russians often accuse others of what they plan themselves.”

In a joint statement after the talks, Britain, France and the United States said they were committed to supporting Ukraine “for as long as it takes” and rejected Russia’s warning about a “dirty bomb”.

“Our countries made clear that we all reject Russia’s transparently false allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory,” they said.

“The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation.”

COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

Sunday’s missile strike in Mykolaiv wiped out the top floor of the apartment block, sending shrapnel and debris across a plaza and into neighbouring buildings, Reuters witnessed. No fatalities were recorded.

“After the first blast, I tried to get out, but the door was stuck,” said Oleksandr Mezinov, 50, who was woken from his bed by the blasts. “After a minute or two, there was a second loud blast. Our door was blown into the corridor.”

On Sunday, Ukraine’s General Staff said anti-aircraft defences had shot down 12 of Russia’s Iranian-made Shahed-136 attack drones in the past 24 hours.

Tehran denies supplying the weapons to Russia.

Britain’s defence ministry said Russia was using the Iranian uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) to substitute for increasingly scarce Russian-made long-range precision weapons.

A local man throws debris out of a broken window in a residential building heavily damaged by a Russian missile attack in Mykolaiv, Ukraine October 23, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

But Ukraine’s efforts to contain the UAVs have been successful, the ministry added on Monday in its Twitter update.

Ukraine’s advances in recent weeks around Kherson and in the country’s northeast have been met with intensifying Russian missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure, which have destroyed about 40% of Ukraine’s power system ahead of winter.

On Monday, the region’s Russian-installed administration announced the formation of a local militia, saying that all men remaining in the city could join.

Russian troops have withdrawn from parts of the front and occupation authorities are evacuating civilians deeper into Russian-held territory before an expected battle for Kherson, the regional capital on the west bank of the Dnipro river.

Kherson is a gateway to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

“The situation today is difficult. It’s vital to save your lives,” Russian Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov said in a video message. “It won’t be for long. You will definitely return.”

Russia-installed authorities there reported insufficient vessels to ferry people across the river at one point on Sunday, blaming a “sharp increase in the number of people wishing to leave”.

About 25,000 people have been evacuated since Tuesday, the Interfax news agency said.

Ukraine’s military said it was making gains in the south, taking over at least two villages it said Russia had abandoned.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its forces had kept up attacks on Ukraine’s energy and military infrastructure, destroyed a large ammunition depot in the central Cherkasy region, and repelled Ukrainian counter-offensives in the south and east.

Reuters could not independently verify the accounts.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Russian attacks on energy infrastructure had struck on a “very wide” scale.

With the war about to start its ninth month and winter approaching, the potential for freezing misery loomed.

Volodymyr Kudritskiy, head of Ukraine’s national energy company, Ukrenergo, said power had been restored to more than 1.5 million customers after mass weekend attacks on energy targets.

Moscow denies targeting civilians in what it calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Ukraine also accused Russia of hampering a deal on grain exports via the Black Sea, saying its ports were working only at 25% to 30% capacity.

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Additional reporting by Jake Cordell and Valentyn Ogirenko in Mykolaiv; Writing by Clarence Fernandez; Editing by Stephen Coates

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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US

Factbox: Is the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine about to be blown?

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Oct 21 (Reuters) – Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of planning to blow up the Kakhovka hydro-electric dam on the Dnipro River, a step that would unleash a devastating flood across a large area of southern Ukraine.

What is the Kakhovka dam, is it about to be blown and what impact would that have?

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DAM

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* The dam, 30 metres (yards) tall and 3.2 km (2 miles) long, was built in 1956 on the Dnipro river as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant.

* It holds an 18 km3 reservoir which also supplies water to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is also under Russian control.

* The volume of water in the reservoir is about equal to the Great Salt Lake in the U.S. state of Utah.

* Blowing the Soviet-era dam, which is controlled by Russia, would unleash a wall of devastating floodwater across much of the Kherson region which Russia last month proclaimed as annexed in the face of a Ukrainian advance.

* Destroying the Kakhovka hydro-electric power plant would also add to Ukraine’s energy woes after weeks of Russian missile strikes aimed at generation and grid facilities which Kyiv said have damaged a third of its country-wide power network.

ALLEGATIONS

* Sergei Surovikin, the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, said on Tuesday he had information that Ukrainian forces were preparing a massive strike on the dam and had already used U.S.-supplied HIMARS missiles of a major strike, he said, could be a disaster.

“We have information on the possibility of the Kyiv regime using prohibited methods of war in the area of the city of Kherson, on the preparation by Kyiv of a massive missile strike on the Kakhovka hydro-electric dam,” Surovikin said.

Ukrainian officials said the allegation was a sign that Moscow planned to attack the dam and blame Kyiv.

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that Russia had mined the dam and was preparing to blow it, a step he compared to the use of weapons of mass destruction.

“I informed the Europeans today, during the meeting of the European Council, about the next terrorist attack, which Russia is preparing for at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant,” he said. “Destroying the dam would mean a large-scale disaster.”

Blowing the dam, he said, would also destroy the water supply to Crimea and thus show that Russia had accepted that it could not hold onto the peninsula.

Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy head of the annexed Kherson region, said Kyiv’s allegations that Russia had mined the dam were false.

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Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Philippa Fletcher

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Thousands take to the streets of Paris to protest soaring prices

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PARIS, Oct 16 (Reuters) – Thousands of people took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to protest against soaring prices as weeks of strikes for higher wages at oil refineries spurred demands for a general strike.

The leader of hard-left party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), Jean-Luc Melenchon, marched alongside this year’s Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Annie Ernaux. He called a general strike for Tuesday.

“You’re going to live a week like no other, we are the ones who started it with this march,” he told the crowd.

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Melenchon followed the footsteps of four unions – but not France’s biggest, the moderate CFDT – which have called for strikes and protests on Tuesday for wage increases.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of French far-left opposition party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), and leader of the New Ecologic and Social People’s Union (NUPES), takes part in a protest against soaring inflation and what they call a lack of government action to fight climate change, in Paris, France October 16, 2022. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

The four unions also called the protests to help protect the right to strike, after the government ordered the requisitioning of some oil refinery workers, a move seen by unions as a violation of their constitutional rights.

The march followed a call by the NUPES parliamentary coalition, which hopes to turn the page on domestic violence accusations that have recently dogged senior members.

Budget Minister Gabriel Attal said the left-wing coalition was attempting to exploit the current situation, marked by ongoing strikes at French utility EDF’s nuclear plants and at French oil refineries.

“Today’s march is a march of supporters who want to block the country,” he said on French radio station Europe 1.

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Reporting by Lucient Libert and Stépahne Mahe; Additional reporting by Bertrand Boucey; Writing by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Nick Macfie

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